


i'll never send it, anyway

by WellyFullOfAle



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, Emotional pain, Heartbreak, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 13:32:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WellyFullOfAle/pseuds/WellyFullOfAle
Summary: Aaron's counsellor tells him to write a letter to Robert with all of his feelings.(or, self-indulgent pain relief that i cried whilst writing. should probably come with a heartbreak warning.)





	i'll never send it, anyway

**Author's Note:**

> i don't really know what this is, other than a way for me to work through my heartbreak. probably incredibly ooc but there we go.

There’s five balls of paper scrunched up at his feet already, another one lying aimlessly beside the door after having been catapulted across the room.

Aaron bites down again on the end of the pen – some freebie from a supplier that Adam’s probably had in his mouth at some point too, the realisation of which makes him grimace and pull the pen from between this teeth – and he taps the end of it at speed against his notepad.

He doesn’t even know why he’s doing this.

Well, that’s a lie.

He’s doing it because his counsellor told him to.

 _“It might help you get some clarity if you write it all down,”_ she’d said.

He’d resisted for three sessions, questioned what the hell the point was in writing things down when he’d said everything he needed to say to Robert already.

The look she’d given him at that point made it pretty clear she didn’t believe him for one second, and Aaron had sighed and dodged the question.

He’d carried on grimacing whenever she’d suggested it, until one not-so-special session where she asked him to write down the three most important things in his life onto a slip of paper, and he’d realised that seeing -

  1. liv
  2. mum
  3. me?



 - written on a scrap of paper with some medical suppliers details on the header had actually managed to given him a little perspective.

So maybe his counsellor hadn’t been completely hopeless, after all.

So here he finds himself, pen in hand, wondering how the hell he’s even meant to start it.

 _Dear Robert_ seems too formal.

 _Hello_ too…not him.

 _Hi_ seems like they’re mates, and he’s not sure that’s the message he wants to be giving Robert right now.

He scrunches up another sheet of paper and fires it in the direction of the bin; misses.

_Robert,_

He starts, staring down at the word until it becomes blurry between the feint blue lines on the page.

What now?

He shakes his head and he presses the biro to the page, making a little squiggle before pulling it away and tapping the other end of the pen against the page again, sighing loudly as he stares at the ceiling.

“Doesn’t even matter,” he mutters out loud to himself after a few minutes.

It’s not like he’s even going to send the letter – that had been the condition he’d given his counsellor. He’d do it, but no way was he sending it.

She’d told him that was fine, that the point wasn’t to tell Robert, but to get things clear in his own head, and he’d found himself strangely eager to get it done once that penny had dropped.

It had seemed so much easier that way.

_Robert,_

He looks down at the page again; exhaling sharply before biting down on his lip and letting himself open up.

_My counsellor made me write this. You’re never going to read it so I guess it doesn’t really matter what I say, does it?_

He reads the sentence back to himself, let his eyes scour back and forth over the words, barely legible in his scrawled handwriting. He resists the urge to rip the page from the spine of his notepad and hurl it across the room to join its brothers on the floor.

“Just fucking write it,” he mutters to himself again, scrubbing his face with his hands before allowing himself to try and order his thoughts.

_Robert,_

_My counsellor made me write this. You’re never going to read it so I guess it doesn’t really matter what I say, does it?_

_I don’t even know where to start. What am I even meant to be saying to you? Whatever I couldn’t say to your face? Okay then._

_I wish I didn’t feel anything when I see you_

He rips at the page, feeling a tear tracking down his cheeks as he scrunches the paper into his palms and drops the crumpled remnants of it back down onto his desk.

He feels the need for some air, grabs his gloves and heads outside of the portacabin, kicks at the tyre of a car as he makes his way over to the racks to start pulling at the parts in need of sorting.

It’s almost an hour later when he lets himself give up; when he feels his breathing return back to normal and that ache inside of his stomach lose intensity; when he’s written the letter twelve times over in his head and knows what he needs to get onto that paper.

He takes a deep breath and heads back to the portacabin, gloves thrown aside as he makes his way back to his desk and smooths his palm out over the crumpled up paper that still rests on his desk.

He sits down and picks up his pen, reading over what he’d written an hour before, and he lets his thoughts spill out onto the paper, writing so furiously he gives himself a cramp; tears littering against the page, pausing in parts as the pain of what he’s writing causes him to almost double over in grief.

He pushes past it, knows he needs to finish this now he’s started, can feel it working as he lets the words spill out of him onto the page, can feel the cloud clearing somewhat.

He can feel a weight lifting as he finishes it; can feel fresh air filling his lungs for the first time in a month.

He wipes his eyes and holds the letter out before him, letting his eyes scan over the page to read his thoughts back to himself, choking down the tears as he does so.

_Robert,_

_My counsellor made me write this. You’re never going to read it so I guess it doesn’t really matter what I say, does it?_

_I don’t even know where to start. What am I even meant to be saying to you? Whatever I couldn’t say to your face? Okay then._

_I wish I didn’t feel anything when I see you around the village. I wish looking at you didn’t bring up everything I still feel for you. I wish you hadn’t put me in this place where I can’t just love you the way I want to. Where I can’t just be with you the way I want to. I can’t sleep – I haven’t slept a full night since you moved out. I can’t bear waking up in the night and you’re not behind me, I can’t feel you beside me – you were always so warm, always there – and it hurts. It hurts so much Robert. You were supposed to be there, sleeping next to me, for the rest of my life. And now what do I have? Nothing._

_Staying away from you is so hard. It hurts so much._

_I’m angry at you Robert – I’m angry that you did this to us, after everything. You sat and you promised me once that you only wanted me, that you wanted messed up with me forever. That you were sure, and that you loved me. Did you even mean it? Did you? Because I tell myself you did, and I believe it so much of the time, but then I remember what you did, and a part of me feels like I’m never going to be enough for you, Robert. Like you’re always going to be looking for something better, because that’s what you’ve always done before, isn’t it?_

_Am I ever really going to be enough for you?_

_And this isn’t about forgiving you. I said I forgave you for what you did, and I do forgive you Robert. I know us. I know what happened. I know that I pushed you, and I’m angry at myself too because I made mistakes as well. But it doesn’t end there, does it? It doesn’t end with us both making a mistake and moving past it. There’s more now, isn’t there? And I can’t handle it. I wish I could be a better person – the kind of person who wouldn’t hate your child and wouldn’t just break down at being reminded every single day about what you did – but I can’t do it. I can’t do that to myself._

_Do you see that I can’t?_

_I hope you can see it. I hope you can see how much I want you still – I’ll always want you – but how much I can’t do it for the sake of myself. I need to be better than I am, Robert. I need to be able to cope with things better than I do. And I don’t trust myself around you – I nearly hurt you, didn’t I? I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you which were my fault. I couldn’t live with myself, if I hurt you. I need you to be okay, and I need me to be okay too. And right now, we can’t be okay if we’re together._

_As much as it hurts. Every single day._

_We need to be apart. I need to learn to live without you, and without the way that I hate myself some times when I’m around you, and the way that it hurts to have to talk to you about being a father, when all along I want us to be doing that together. I hadn’t even thought about it – hadn’t thought you’d ever want to go there – but now I realise you’re going to be such a good dad, and I just wish it was something we could have done together. But it isn’t. It isn’t now, is it? There will always be this. And I can’t stand it. I can’t live with it. It hurts just so much, Robert. So fucking much, and I hate the way it makes me feel._

_Not all of the time – I don’t want you to think that you didn’t also give me the best times of my life, and I will forever appreciate that you were there for me and that you stepped up when I needed you the most – but right now, how my head is, I can’t be around you. I can’t be reminded every day of the way you broke my heart._

_It hurts too much. Right now._

_Right now? I know how that sounds. It sounds like this isn’t forever, doesn’t it?_

_I don’t know if I’m saying I’m always going to feel this way. I know I’m always going to love you – I said that and I meant it. If I couldn’t stop before there’s no way I can stop now, not after everything. Maybe in time I can get my head around things, but not now, and not any time soon._

_I don’t know if I should even be saying this. Should I be giving you this hope, knowing that I might not be able to get past all this?_

_I don’t suppose it matters. It’s not like I’m ever going to give you this letter, anyway._

_I suppose if that’s the case I can just tell you that I love you._

_I miss you._

_I miss how we were – how you made me feel on our wedding day. How you made me feel like we’d finally made it. Like we could finally be how I’d wanted to be for so long. So long, Robert. Sometimes I think you must really have no idea how much I love you._

_And sometimes I think you’re the only one who understands it at all._

_I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. I know I will never love anyone like I love you._

_But I know that I need to love myself a little bit, too. So that’s what this is – that’s what I’m trying to do._

_You’ve got to let me do that, too – and learn to love yourself a more, too._

_Please, just – don’t forget me, okay? Don’t forget what we had. I couldn’t bear that._

_You’re the love of my life, Robert. You always will be._

_Look after yourself._

_Aaron_

He wipes his hand down his face again, tears staining his cheeks and nose running as he takes a deep breath to steady himself.

He folds the paper in half, scribbling _Robert_ onto the front of it and underlining his name twice. He doesn’t know why he does it – has no intention of ever showing the letter to his husband – _ex-husband_ – but he places it back down on the desk and takes a deep breath.

He smiles to himself.

Something feels…settled; clearer, somehow.

Maybe his counsellor had been right.

He feels his phone vibrate in his pocket, pulls it out to find Cain ringing him and demanding his assistance at the garage.

He throws the letter under a pile of papers, mutters to himself something about dealing with it later – sure he’ll probably burn it or something – before quickly scooping up the discarded balls of paper around the floor and chucking them into the bin before leaving the portacabin, door slammed shut in his wake.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know if you liked it. i'm on tumblr - wellyfullofale


End file.
